


Fading Away

by Jinx72



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with soft ending, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Isolation, Knife Mention, Starvation, Suicide mention, Sympathetic Deceit, Sympathetic Remus, Touch Starved Deceit, death mention, selfharm mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-07 17:03:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19855837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jinx72/pseuds/Jinx72
Summary: Deceit looks down, his gloves set aside, and notices how he doesn’t have fingertips anymore. He lifts his hands up to the light and tries to laugh at how he’s going transparent.The less a side is used, the less a corporeal form is needed, until it faded away back into the mind. The abstract stays, for how could Thomas function without it?But an unneeded side fades from consciousness, because why waste mental power on a manifestation of an unused concept, after all. They fade until they’re just a memory.And memories get forgotten.Deceit puts his gloves on and tries to ignore how his fingertips don’t fill out the gloves.cross-posted from my tumblr





	Fading Away

**Author's Note:**

> I'm adding this warning onto all my fanworks due to a scare I had the other day. 
> 
> I have recently discovered one of my fanfics was posted on another site without my knowledge or consent. PLEASE DO NOT POST MY WORK ONTO OTHER SITES, FULL STOP. If I intended for my works to be on wattpad or fanfiction.net, I would have posted them there myself. Thank you, and enjoy the fic.

Deceit finds it absolutely fascinating, how much the others tell Thomas. What they tell him, what they don’t. The cues and empty questions that whether they liked it or not were for Deceit. Information he dealt at will like a dealer at a blackjack table. Despite how unwilling the others were to trust him, to _use_ him, Deceit always had a place in Thomas’ little world.

Then Anxiety left.  
Anxiety left, and Deceit became a little weaker.

Anxiety went and made nice with Thomas and the others - he was so young compared to say Morality and Logic and himself, but Anxiety needed out of this dark, dirty, violent hellhole and Deceit couldn’t blame him. Maybe that’s why he never made Virgil come back. Maybe he was jealous. Maybe he understood.  
Maybe some part of him wanted the best for him.  
Maybe.  
But that, he thinks as he looks down at his hands, was the beginning of the end.

He wonders why they don’t tell Thomas how the sides properly work. Every little facet and gritty detail, what he deserves to know and to understand. He wonders if they’ll ever tell him about what happens to the unaddressed parts of him.  
About…  
...  
He can’t even remember his name.

Remus was an interesting case for Deceit. Until recently, he had been keeping him down here, with him, trying to ease Thomas into it when the time was right, but he had made a mistake.  
If he dares to be honest, Virgil had made him hopeful. That people like him, people like _them_ could grow to be important and valued. Maybe even _loved_ , if he dares to dream.  
Virgil had made him let his guard down.  
He had felt so close to making his point.  
So _close_.

He remembers coming home after the trial, undoing his cufflinks and loosening his tie when he looked up to see Remus’ door hanging open. He remembers his stomach dropping. He remembers rushing to search the entire subconscious, panic clawing at his throat.  
Remus disappeared on him.  
Flat out disappeared on him.  
He only found out what Remus had gotten up to when Roman had stormed downstairs in a fit of anger and shouted at him for half an hour.

Remus still hasn’t returned.  
He supposes that’s good for Remus. That means the Duke’s not under threat of fading anymore.  
Deceit looks down, his gloves set aside, and notices how he doesn’t have fingertips anymore. He lifts his hands up to the light and tries to laugh at how he’s going transparent.

The less a side is used, the less a corporeal form is needed, until it faded away back into the mind. The abstract stays, for how could Thomas function without it?  
But an unneeded side fades from consciousness, because why waste mental power on a manifestation of an unused concept, after all. They fade until they’re just a memory.  
And memories get forgotten.  
Deceit puts his gloves on and tries to ignore how his fingertips don’t fill out the gloves.

The next time he’s needed, Deceit feels a lot lighter. Then again, _lighter_ is not quite the word he’s looking for.  
He feels a lot _less_.  
The gloves don’t hide his hands anymore, because even his clothing is fading with him. His hands are basically gone. His legs too, up to about the mid-shin. He floats along, hauntingly ephemeral as he gets lonelier and lonelier, and the lower floor gets emptier and emptier.  
He gets dragged up by his translucent hair next to Logan, hissing through thin lips as apologies tumble his way. He feels stronger for them, though, because Logan _doesn’t_ feel bad for hurting him, and those little lies can ground him in a way nothing else has for weeks. Thomas, bless him, has been trying to change his ways. He has been trying to be a better person by been painfully and methodically honest.  
Thomas has said a lot of things he regrets. Thomas has lost a few friends, a few vital opportunities.  
Thomas has learnt new things about himself he just wasn’t ready to handle.  
Deceit can feel the emotional and moral weight of Thomas’ attempts sitting on his shoulders, because in trying to be better, Thomas just keeps _hurting himself_.  
Honestly? That stings.  
That was what Deceit had been trying to tell them. Spent months trying to tell them.

Most of all, though, it hurts on a literal level - Deceit is being starved. Nothing is powering him, feeding him anymore. Patton encouraged Thomas to put him out of sight, out of mind, because ‘lying only hurts people.’  
Patton’s wrong, Deceit notes quietly. Technically, the lies aren’t the bits that hurt.  
It’s not how fast you drive, it’s the collision at the end that kills.

He doesn’t try to hold back a sneer at the others’ shocked faces as he tries to steady himself. In truth, he is glad he is dragged up next to Logan, because he knows that if he was beside Patton, the side would try and _apologise_ or some other appalling lie. Or even _touch him._  
He can’t really feel anything anymore.  
So when everyone stares at him in horror, and he notes even Remus is there, next to Roman, and Remus and Virgil look even _more_ horrified because maybe they also remember that unnameable side from so long ago; but Deceit _knows_ that every side here knows _exactly_ what is happening to him. And he can’t help but laugh.  
“What?” he goads. “Something _off,_ gentlemen?”

“Deceit, what-” Virgil starts, and they lock eyes for the first time in months and Deceit can see fear in Virgil’s eyes as he stammers. But for once, it doesn’t seem to be fear _of_ him.  
Virgil is scared _for_ him.  
Something must really be off.  
“I don’t understand,” Deceit states with a shake of his head. “Why are you all looking so scared?”  
“W-what’s happening to you?” Thomas interjects, and the poor thing, he does look genuinely distressed.  
“He’s…” Roman begins, but his voice dies out.  
“…fading away,” Remus finishes, voice uncharacteristically quiet and eyes unusually bright.  
“Fading away?” Thomas echoes in panic. “What does that mean?”  
Logan is staring him down, challenging him to meet his gaze, and Deceit rises to the challenge.  
Logan looks healthier than he remembers. Stronger. His eyes are the strong, warm brown they should be.  
He wonders what his own eyes look like. How pale they must be.  
“How long has it been like this, Deceit?” Logan asks, and there’s some underlying softness to his tone, some understanding that the honesty of makes Deceit’s stomach turn.  
It takes him a moment to decide whether he wants to reply or not.  
“Months,” he eventually admits.  
He sees movement in his peripherals, and he turns to see Patton. Patton, with his hands over his mouth, horror shining in his eyes, and even _better, **realisation.**_ ****  
“I…” Patton gasps, his eyes which almost glow with the intensity Deceit can feel bearing down on him even from across the room.  
Thomas, subconsciously, echoes the gesture.  
“I did this, didn’t I?” the moral side whispers. “I did this to you.”  
Thomas’ hands fall from his mouth, and his scared confusion turns on Patton. “What do you mean?”  
“The more a side is neglected, the less your mind considers them a priority, Thomas,” Logan starts to explain, and Deceit just clasps what’s left of his hands behind his back and watches with polite disinterest.  
“Logan,” Patton cuts the logical side off warningly. “We don’t want to scare him.”  
Logan recoils, glancing around the room, and his expression hardens as he sees Virgil nod in agreement and Roman look away without a word of opposition.  
Deceit’s hands tighten. He’s not upset, he tells himself sternly, and he feels a little better for it.  
“No, I want to know,” Thomas insists, and he’s actually _glaring_ at Patton, and Deceit wonders what he missed in his months away. “Tell me!”  
“Believe me,” Patton repeats. “We don’t want to scare you.”  
He sounds like he’s about to cry.  
Everyone’s staring at Patton.  
Patton is staring at Deceit, like he’s the prime example of everything that’s gone wrong with them.

Something in Deceit’s chest snaps.

  
“I don’t understand why you’re upset,” he bites, his tone chillingly cold. “This,” he gestures up and down himself angrily, “is what you wanted all along, wasn’t it? So why aren’t you happy?”  
The silence that settles on them is choking.  
Deceit can’t keep himself from looking at everyone, searching for some answer. Everyone is staring with the same horrified face.  
“Why aren’t you celebrating?” he repeats, and hysteria is beginning to claw at his throat. “You’ve done it! You’ve defeated the bad side of Thomas! Hurray!”  
He throws what’s left of his hands in the air as a final, empty punctuation.  
“You’ve won,” he says hollowly. “Congratulations.”

“Deceit-” Thomas tries to start, but is silenced when Deceit simply raises a hand. Which is good, because he doesn’t have the strength to silence any of them the old-fashioned way anymore.  
“Please, Thomas,” he says quietly, with more sincerity than he really intended. “If you aren’t going to incorporate lying back into your life properly, don’t do it now. It’s...”  
He swallows.  
“It hurts when you just trickle-feed it.”  
“…Feed?”  
Deceit rubs his temples.  
“The most important thing for a side is to be used, Thomas,” he begins explains with as much patience he can muster. It’s not Thomas’ fault that they never told him. And even now he can feel Patton, Virgil and Roman’s desperate eyes itching his scalp, beginning him not to continue.  
That is a bit of a last straw for Deceit.  
His head snaps towards them, but mostly towards Patton, because he will be the first one to admit that his frustration over his situation has been directed at Patton, and he growls out, “he ought to know by now.”  
Three sets of eyes fall to the floor.  
“He _deserves_ to know.”  
Thomas is glancing around at the others, and Deceit can see the dawning realisation that they have been willingly holding information from him, and will continue to do so happily, and a sharp pain shoots through him.  
He tries not to stumble, or to cry out.  
Logan catches him as he staggers.  
This is it. This is the last big thing the sides were hiding from Thomas.  
This is the last thing tethering Deceit here as they knew him.  
He feels sick.  
But he’s committed now.  
Deceit closes his eyes and hisses out a pained, annoyed breath. After all that, starving for months on end, he doesn’t even get the dignity of a peaceful death.

“Deceit,” Logan says softly, and Deceit cracks an eye open to look up at him. The side looks pale. They all look pale, like they’d seen a ghost.  
Deceit looks down at himself and realises why.  
Because Deceit barely exists now.  
The thinnest wisp of an outline is all that alludes to the fact that he had a full form now. He seems to just be a face. A sickly disembodied face.  
“He deserves to know,” Deceit repeats, and his voice sounds hollow and tinny, more like an echo than a sound.  
“Deceit,” Thomas interrupts, and he sounds so _pained._ “I don’t know what’s going on, but this sounds uncomfortably like you’re going to kill yourself to tell me the truth.”  
Deceit blinks at him a few times, before his gaze falls to the floor because when Thomas puts it that way, it sounds deranged. Awful.  
“Deceit, let me tell you something,” Thomas continues before Deceit could answer. “I feel… _awful_ without you. I feel like I’ve destroyed my life and I know it’s because I haven’t been using you.”  
Deceit turns away, but there’s nowhere to hide for him, there’s nothing left to deceive them with.  
“I have been miserable,” Thomas states, crumpling in defeat. “We all have. Because we… _I_ realise just how vital you are to keep me going. And if it takes you withholding this last bit of information about me to keep you around, I’d really rather you do that.”  
Patton opens his mouth to say something. Deceit turns to him, a ghostly mask, and those words die on his lips.  
“The video where I met you for the first time, without Patton? You were right,” Thomas says, catching Deceit’s gaze and fixating on him. “Not about lying all the time, but that lying can be good. That lying is important, and that lying is _human._ Deceit, I’ve been…”  
Thomas looks down at his hands, and Deceit notices they’re shaking.  
“There’s been nothing between my intrusive thoughts and my anxiety,” he mumbles out, and Deceit’s eyes wander over to Remus, who still looks uncharacteristically gaunt, and Virgil, who hugs himself tightly and does his best to disappear.  
“My creativity and my morals have been at war, because what I _want,_ I can’t get because it means I’d have to neglect other’s needs.”  
Patton is staring at the ceiling, and it seems the weight of his decisions has hit him fully and is moving him to tears, though he is absolutely silent as he sobs.  
Roman, he now notices, is dead silent, utterly exhausted, and looking a little thin. Deceit notices that he is leaning on Remus to stay upright, who is holding him tightly like he’s afraid Roman’s going to disappear from his grasp. He notices Roman’s looking a little transparent around the edges.  
No wonder Remus is looking better than ever.  
“The only thing trying to keep me tied down to reality is logic,” Thomas whispers, because that’s all that can pierce this heady silence. “And logic can only do so much.”  
Deceit turns his head to look at Logan, _Logan_ , who has slipped an arm under his shoulders to support him, even though there’s nothing to support.  
Logan, who’s still trying to keep everything together.  
“I have talked Thomas down from several panic attacks over the past few weeks,” Logan follows up softly. “I have talked Thomas down to putting the knives back in the kitchen and zip-tying the drawers closed. I have talked Thomas down from crashing his car into the next lamppost on the side of the road because it’s so hard to find things left to live for.”  
He sounds as shattered as Roman looks.  
Deceit swallows hard. “What does this have to do with me?” he asks.  
He knows. He does know. He just wants, for his own stupid, selfish reasons, to hear them say it.  
“Because I can’t live with myself! I can’t _cope_ without you!” Thomas bursts out, and he sounds frantic, like a man pushed to the edge. “I’m so, so, _so,_ sorry, Deceit. We need you! _I_ need you!”

Deceit feels a rush of pure energy sweep through him, invigorating and grounding. His vision goes white. A cry is torn from his lips.  
All of a sudden, he has feeling in his fingertips.

Deceit falls to the floor with a gasp, landing on his knees and staring down at his gloved hands with fingers that fill out the full glove and his vision blurs as he can’t help but cry. He hasn’t _felt_ this much in so long. He finds himself leaning back, settling on his thighs as he tugs off his gloves and holds his hands up to the light, eyes wide as he stares, examining every pore, searching for any hint of transparency that will prove this entire thing to be a dying dream, but the light doesn’t pass through his hands like that.  
He is whole.  
Everything comes into sharp focus, and he realises Thomas is crouching in front of him, calling his name, holding his hands out to him, and Deceit latches on, crying at the contact, and as Thomas pulls him in for a hug Deceit can’t keep himself from sobbing into his shoulder.  
“I never wanted to hurt you,” he sobs.  
“I know.”  
“I just wanted you to take care of yourself. You’re allowed to look after yourself first.”  
“I-I know, Deceit. It’s okay.”  
“It’s not wrong to be selfish! It’s not wrong to make sure your wounds have healed before you go around healing everyone else first!” Deceit cries, because these are words he wanted to say all those months ago at the court trial. “You deserve to come first, Thomas.”  
Thomas hug tightens, and he thinks the Centre is crying too.  
“T-thank you, Deceit,” he murmurs.  
“Your dreams are not unachievable. You’re allowed to fight for what you want and make a name for yourself how you please.”  
Thomas hums in response.

For the next few minutes, Deceit talks. Deceit talks and talks and says everything that has crossed his mind that he never thought he’d get to say. By the time he’s finished Patton’s eyes are the normal, strong, warm brown they should be and nothing more, and Roman is looking so much healthier.  
Deceit helps Thomas to his feet and he can’t hold back a smile at how easy it is to stand. He squeezes Thomas’ hand reassuringly, to prove he can.  
“So will you come back?” Thomas asks, and his face is full of hope. “Will you help me?”  
“Of course not,” Deceit deadpans, before breaking into a wide grin and winking.  
Thomas ducks his head and laughs.  
It feels so good to see Thomas laughing.  
“I need to say, though,” Deceit pauses, because he needs to ground them for a moment. “I can’t miraculously fix you. I can’t cover up truths you already know. And I don’t want to be blamed when that doesn’t happen.”  
Thomas nods, soberly, and he can see the exhaustion in his eyes.  
“It’s going to be okay,” Deceit tells him, with as much sincerity as he can muster. “I know it will. You’ll be okay.”  
There’s a rustle of movement, and suddenly there’s a pair of arms wrapping around him from behind. He freezes, before he realises that for one, this is a hug, and two, that it’s _Virgil_.  
“You scared me,” Virgil murmurs, face pressed into his back.  
“I’m sorry,” Deceit whispers back.  
There’s another rush of movement, and admittedly, a bad smell, and Remus is there and hugging him too.  
“You snakey bastard,” Remus chokes out, and Deceit wraps an arm around him and tries not to breathe through his nose because having working senses again is a little intense.  
“I-”  
Remus cuts himself off because he has no clue what to say.  
“Thanks,” Deceit replies anyway. Because this is probably the most sincere thing he will get out of the side. These two, who have put up with him for god knows how long, embracing him, actually _touching_ him, _remembering_ him.  
He can feel other people piling on, and he is surrounded by warmth.  
He’s never felt so whole in his life.  


Everyone has gone their separate ways now, retreating to bedrooms and sofas, and Deceit lets himself sit in an armchair dragged over to Patton’s window. The blinds are up, letting warm afternoon sunlight shine through. He curls up in the glow, enjoying the warmth for the first time in a long time.  
The dragging of a chair across carpet causes him lazily open one eye at the sound, and he looks up to see Patton sitting across from him on a dining room chair, the discomfort written plain on his face.  
“Patton,” he states, closing his eye again.  
“D-Deceit,” Patton tries to respond in kind.  
The crack in his voice strikes something in Deceit. He freezes for a second, before sitting up properly and opening his eyes.  
“I should like to talk with you, if you would permit it,” Patton says, oddly formal, picking at the ends of his cardigan sleeves and not looking up.  
“Of course,” Deceit says softly. “There are things that need to be said.”  
“Yes,” Patton agrees immediately. “First of all, I am _so_ sorry.”  
Deceit tries to smile. He really does.  
“It’s alright.”  
“It’s not,” Patton cuts him off curtly. “My behaviour was unacceptable.”  
He looks away and his eyes wander around the room. Deceit watches him for a moment, before heaving a sigh, and looking out the window.  
“Logan and I have discussed my behaviour over the past year,” Patton relays. He sounds detached. Methodical. “And I’ve come to many realisations today.”  
Deceit turns back to him, and reaches forward and takes Patton’s hand, causing the side to jump nearly out of his skin and his head to snap towards him. Patton’s eyes are large and watery, overflowing with emotions that he was refusing to let spill past his lips.  
“You don’t need to change who you fundamentally are to fix this,” Deceit comments. “You’re trying to be Logan right now. You’re trying to be … ‘grown up.’ And that’s not who you are. Pretending to be someone else is only going to hurt _you_ , Patton.”  
Patton’s tears are threatening to spill over now.  
“You made some poor decisions. So did I. And some of my decisions have had way more impact than I would have liked,” Deceit continues, eyes falling down to their clasped hands. “I got so carried away with possibilities and what-if’s that I let Remus…”  
He sighs.  
“I hate to say _escape,_ but that’s exactly what he did. I was keeping him prisoner down there until I decided Thomas could handle him.”  
“But he couldn’t,” Patton recoils in confusion.  
“Like I said, Remus escaped early. I came back from the trial and he was gone,” Deceit mumbles, withdrawing his hand to hug himself, trying to fight back shivers. “I let my guard down.”  
Patton is silent for a moment, before he laughs a little to himself.  
“If I hadn’t… emucised?”  
“I think the word you want is _ostracised.”_  
“Ostracised,” Patton echoes, before laughing at his own stupidity. If I hadn’t _ostracised_ Remus so badly, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” he finishes, and he looks so disappointed in himself. “Because I think the Creative Split was my fault too.”  
Deceit looks down, and doesn’t say anything, because he believes that too.  
He remembers the day, years ago, waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, woken by the terrified scream of Creativity, which became two voices. He remembers racing down to his room to find two shaking green and red forms, asking who the other was, terrified.  
It had been a split of morals that had caused that. There was no two ways about it.  
“So I am revising my…” Patton searches for the word he wants, “ideology? Towards Remus, and towards you. Because for Thomas to be a _good_ person we can’t _ignore_ the bad, otherwise it…”  
“Festers,” Deceit offers, because that feels like an apt word. “And I can’t put my head down and ignore you, either, Morality. Whether we like it or not, I think we go hand in hand.”  
Patton dares to smile at that, and takes Deceit’s hand again.  
“I think that makes sense,” Patton agrees. “I have been chock-full of flawed logic and unconscious bias that has only hurt people.”  
“I can’t say that I wasn’t, either,” Deceit nods. “I…”  
He swallows hard and tries to keep eye contact.  
“I can’t promise everything out of my mouth will be kind,” he blurts, because it needs to be said. “I was lonely and bitter for so long, I needed something to blame. And that something became _you_.”  
Patton laughs sadly to himself.  
“Me too,” he comments, as he stands and offers Deceit a hand up. “We must be more alike than we think. But I’m willing to work with you now. Or, in the very least, I’m willing to try.”  
Deceit smiles, and accepts both the peace offering and the hand up with a nod of his head.

Patton suddenly pulls him into a hug. Deceit freezes in shock, because this much contact feels like it’s short-circuiting his brain, before melting into the warmth he’s so unused to.  
They stand there for a moment, before Patton pulls back. “Welcome to the famILY, Dee,” he offers. “May I call you Dee?”  
“Only if I may be permitted to call you Pat, Pat,” Deceit barters with a smile.  
“Done,” Patton grins, slapping his shoulder in the Dad way. “Now, want to help me with dinner? I’ll make sure we have something _egg-cellent!_ ”  
Deceit follows Patton into the kitchen with a laugh.  
“Oh, the endless _pasta-bilities.”_  
As he hears Patton laugh back, Deceit buzzes with excitement and warmth, because

He could almost dare to say he finally feels _content._


End file.
